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March is “Trypod” Month, where podcasts are asking enthusiasts to recommend their favorites. I only started listening to podcasts last summer, but I already have several favorites. One of the reasons I took so long to try podcasts was that I hadn’t heard of many. I tried out my first podcast after reading an interesting episode, and now I’m hooked.

Podcasts are great companions to life’s chores that occupy the hands but not the brain. I listen to podcasts when I do the dishes, when I fold clothes, and when I work in the garden. I love to learn, and this way I can learn at times I couldn’t before.

I listen to quite a range of stuff, as my favorites list will show. I’m also eager for new oddball recommendations.

On BackStory, three University of Virginia professors of history discuss a topic as it has played out through American history. (In 2017, they switched to four professors.) Topics include the history of church and state in America, the history of scandal, and the history of infrastructure, among others. Backstory delights in illuminating the bizarre and exciting about history, while connecting these topics to the present day. And with professors of history, you know you’re listening to real, researched history. Hooray!

I’m a long-time Russian history enthusiast; if you aren’t this might not be your cup of tea, but it’s one of my favorites. The host isn’t a historian, he just likes Russian history, and does a good job telling it. Nothing flashy, just the history of this massive and enigmatic country, from the time of the Kievan Rus through the present day. The first ~130 episodes cover the Russian rulers, but from there it branches out. There is a massive archive for this podcast, and it’s one of my favorites for doing chores.

It’s hard to find good science journalism. That’s why the Science Magazine podcast is so spectacular. Beyond being informative, Science Podcast is fun. I understand my corner of science well enough, but I didn’t have a good insight into advancements in biological studies, for example. Everyone’s read about hair-brained sounding science studies, like making shrimp walk on treadmills (yes, this is real!); the podcast reveals how these strange studies are often really clever ways to answer tough questions. ScienceMagazine is a product of AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science), of which I am a member and highly recommend.

Science and Nature are the top publication venues in the physical sciences. And Nature has a podcast as well! Nature does a wider variety of podcasts within the main podcast–it features a monthly science fiction story and a monthly roundtable discussion, in addition to the weekly review. Nature also did a series called PastCast that discussed historical publications in the journal. The journal goes back to 1869, so there’s a lot to work with. Nature also focuses more on science in the international community.

It’s raining in California. A lot. I’ve lived in the midwest, the mountains, the desert, and the northeast, but California weather is weird. Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert (which I reviewed here) details how California’s precipitation comes in 30 year cycles. Since we only have 150 years of modern weather records, that’s 5 cycles of rain. That’s not much data. So it causes havok. In 1916, San Diego hired a guy named Hatfield to literally make it rain. Just as he started work, it rained torrentially, and Hatfield had to flee a lynch mob. (Below is the Backstory Podcast segment on this story.)

I visited beautiful Balboa Park (home of the San Diego Zoo) in endless rain. I braved bus stops without awnings and big puddles. Because San Diegans live outdoors so much, only one restaurant had indoor seating, and was full of dripping puddle people like me. It was a harrowing adventure for one from the desert. I took a few rain-speckled pictures and fled back to the museums. I was lucky they weren’t outdoors too!

Last week was the 100th anniversary of the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram (1/19/1917), in which Germany encouraged Mexico to attack the United States to keep them from participating in WW1. Ironically, the interception contributed to the United States entering the war in April. When we learned about the telegram in school as a child, the idea of Mexico attacking the US sounded laughable. In fact, Pancho Villa had attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico nine months before. At the time of the Zimmermann Telegram, General John Pershing was hunting Villa in northern Mexico in the “Punitive Expedition.”

At the time of the Battle of Columbus, Mexico was several years into the Mexican Revolution. After 35 years, the presidency of Porfirio Díaz collapsed in 1911. A string of leaders followed; Francisco Madero ruled from 1911 until his assassination in 1913. Victoriano Huerto and Venustiano Carranza controlled different parts of Mexico in 1913-1914. In 1914, the United States assaulted the port of Veracruz, with Wilson stating his desire to overthrow Huerta. The United States then supported the presidency of Pancho Villa’s rival, Carranza.

It’s been a rough Thanksgiving! We spent the holiday in Scottsdale, which was pleasant and sunny, but other aspects of the holiday went awry.

For Thanksgiving dinner, I was overconfident and ate some mousse. I was punished prodigiously for my dairy hubris; it was a rough night. We call it “Karen poisoning.” As you might expect, I am a delight on half a night’s sleep and a forcefully empty tummy. We drove to Sedona, which is beautiful, but has one crowded road in. The next day, we visited the spectacular Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.

The drive back to Albuquerque includes some crazy (by my midwestern reckoning) elevation changes; Scottsdale is at 1200 ft and the pass near Payson (climbing the Mogollon Rim) reaches 7700 ft. The Petrified Forest is at 5000 ft, followed by the continental divide at 7200 ft, and Albuquerque is at 5000 ft. In contrast, my home of Missouri ranges from 230 to 1700 feet of elevation.

We hit snow on the pass by Payson. We climbed through white mist as the snow started to stick to the road surrounded by nervous Arizona drivers. After the pass, the sun came out and illuminated a field of windmills. At Petrified Forest, we hit snow again, this time after dark. So, with knowledge that the continental divide would be worse than what we had seen, we stopped in Gallup, New Mexico. In the morning, we made the last, uneventful leg of the trip. It was all over.

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Yesterday, my husband about exploded with food poisoning. Thankfully, I seem unaffected, since I’m still recovering from my dairy-itis. However, one is only so unaffected in a 900 sqft house. It’s too distracting for writing the blog and the day job, so I decided to bump my post to next week in favor of a little cathartic whining.

The first Czechoslovak Republic was mostly the victim of larger circumstances. Based upon the choices made by Germany, Great Britain, and France, Czechoslovakia lived without liberty for 50 years. The Czechoslovakia of 1938 and United States of 2016 are not similar; for one, the US controls its destiny. But in both 1938 Europe and 2016 USA, I see anger diminishing people’s respect for basic human liberty and respect. Early Wednesday morning, Nazi graffiti marred the walls of my campus.

Liberal or conservative, we must stand up for our neighbors. We are still a phenomenally blessed nation. Stand for humanitarianism, not nationalism.

Mount Taylor is a volcano 80 miles west of Albuquerque, the most prominent feature in the western panorama looking from the foothills of the Sandias. It was named in 1849 for then-President Zachary Taylor. The Navajo call it “Tsoodził” (don’t ask me to pronounce that), and the mountain is important in the beliefs of the Navajo and local pueblo peoples. The mountain is rich in uranium, and was a mine until 1990. In nearby Grants, you can visit a mock uranium mine. Mount Taylor is also the site of the grueling-sounding Mount Taylor Quadrathlon, featuring biking, running, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing.

Taylor came to national prominence during the Mexican-American War. This war eventually brought the territory of New Mexico into the union, and is detailed in Amy Greenberg’s A Wicked War. Taylor won famous victories in the Battle of Monterrey and the Battle of Buena Vista. The war was initially popular, and Taylor became correspondingly popular after his victories. Taylor privately opposed the war from its beginning, calling an early troop movement “injudicious in policy and wicked in fact.”

Democratic president James K. Polk (1845-1849), who had almost single-handedly created the war, grew frustrated that Taylor, a whig, was getting credit for what Polk considered democratic achievements. Before the Battle of Buena Vista, Polk stripped Taylor of a portion of his troops, leaving Taylor and his troops more vulnerable to attack from the army of Mexican general Santa Anna. Santa Anna was a busy boy in early Mexican history; he was president 11 nonconsecutive times, and he was the leader of the Mexican forces at the Battle of the Alamo in the Texas revolution. As time passed, the war grew unpopular, and so did Polk. After the invasion of Mexico City, the war stagnated, with US forces harassed by guerrilla warfare. US troops committed atrocities, such as the Agua Nueva Massacre. Polk wanted to annex all of Mexico, and some wealthy individuals in Mexico preferred this to the constant coups that plagued early Mexico. But would this territory permit slavery? And how would dreaded dark skinned Catholics be allowed to become citizens? Eventually, the upper one-third of Mexico’s territory was ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (a treaty that Polk opposed, but grudgingly accepted).

Taylor never saw Mount Taylor nor set foot in New Mexico, as far as I can tell. But he made his mark on the modern state of New Mexico in a couple of ways. The Mexican-American War brought most of the territory of New Mexico into the United States. And during his brief presidency, Taylor opposed Texas’ claims to the eastern half of New Mexico. Thanks in part to President Taylor, I live in New Mexico and not Texas.

Taylor assumed the presidency in March of 1849. Perhaps Polk resented this, but not for long; he had the shortest retirement of any president, dying just three months after leaving office. In the 1800s, presidents took office on March 4th after the election. Because March 4th, 1849 fell on a Sunday, Taylor refused to be sworn in. This led to “President for a Day” David Rice Atchison, who is slightly famous in my home state of Missouri. Taylor lacked specific policies and history considers him to be in the worst 25% of presidents. On July 4th, 1850, President Taylor ate some fruit and milk at a Fourth of July celebration. He became ill and died on July 9th, leaving Vice President Millard Fillmore, who is rated even worse than Taylor, historically. Polk, incidentally, is rated 10th best president, a ranking I suspect the author of A Wicked War disagrees with.

Perhaps someday I will learn how to pronounce Tsoodził, what it means, and the names and meanings of Mount Taylor in the Puebloan languages. Until then, I suppose Old Rough and Ready will have to do. He seems like the sort of person one makes do with.

Since moving west, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting lots of national parks and monuments. I love the hiking, the photography. I love learning about the geology, the flora and fauna, the history, and the archaeology of the parks. But one silly thing brings me a lot of joy: the national parks passport.

The passport is like a travel passport, but stamps are collected at parks rather than airports/countries. After the initial purchase of the book (about $10), the stamps are free. The stamps are generally located by the ranger in the visitor center. The simplest stamps just have the name of the park and the date. Sometimes there are graphic stamps, and this year, most parks have had 100th anniversary stamps for the hundredth anniversary of the National Parks Service.

Until six months ago, I’d never heard of the passport. I felt like I’d missed so many stamps already. Many friends hadn’t heard of the passport either. Now, walking to the ranger station with my passport, sheepish at my childlike delight, is a part of my park ritual. As of this post, I have 38 stamps from 12 national parks and national monuments. It’s a great way to record travel dates, and a terrific hit of silly endorphins. Most of the national park service sites have the stamps, from national seashores to historic forts to national monuments and parks. North Carolina’s lighthouses have stamps, DC’s memorials have stamps, and the St. Louis Arch has a stamp, to name a few examples. If you have a collecting streak and travel to parks sites, the passport might be a great little friend to you.

The passport is available in national parks gift shops. We leave ours in the armrest of the car, so it’s always ready to go.

Some southwestern stamps from Gila Cliff Dwellings and Chaco Canyon. Chaco has a graphic stamp, which is exciting!

You can by regional stickers separately. Confusingly, there is also a Fort Union in New Mexico, but it was not a trading post. There are stamps for hiking trails and heritage areas, as shown above.

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About Vironevaeh

I am a research scientist and artist living in New Mexico. This blog is a catch-all for my interest in science, art, and science fiction. If you're passionate about these topics, too, drop me a line on a post. I also post about New Mexico, the southwest, photography, and current projects.